soaking in the sun

M is gone for the afternoon, J is napping, and Ez and myself have been hanging out together. I was about to sit in the living room with him and work on editing some photo’s when I walked through a warm strip of sunlight beaming into my room from the rear window. Suddenly the idea of sitting in the cold living room at the front of the house didn’t appeal to me anymore. Instead, I sat down on the floor in the sunlight and draped my freshly diapered baby over my knee and together we bathed in the warmth of the sun. This must have been exactly what Ez needed because he became completely limp and was breathing so steadily that I thought he had fallen asleep, but peering over I saw that he was wide awake. Soon his bum began to rumble and squirt and Ez sunk even deeper into me. I was happy for him. I loved seeing my baby so at peace – in fact I began to be a little jealous, and started dreaming of summer time and laying out in the sun soaking in heavy doses of vitamin D and heaven… I could see it, I could feel it. My foot that lay directly in the sun was becoming warmer. Each toe slowly thawing as the bright sun… oh wait, the bright poop dripping down my toes… bright yellow soupy poo had broken through the barrier of the diaper leg and was dripping down his leg and onto my foot and between my toes.

These moments take a little consideration. You don’t want to jerk your foot away or startle your peaceful baby, or attempt to pick baby up and carry him with you to the restroom (or to the baby wipes, whichever is closer) because the likeliness of making the mess bigger is fairly great. Then there’s the question of whether you clean up yourself, the puddle on the floor, or baby first. There’s a lot of factors in this that kind of leave you to simply soak in the poo a little longer. But finally, you decide that there really is no right answer to any of these questions and you just get it cleaned up. This is motherhood for you… I’m not just referring to the poop, of course, or to the sudden disruption from your blissful moments, but to the decision making you are faced with constantly. There are so many decisions to make as a parent, and a lot of the time none of the choices seem very good. You are pretty sure most of the time that no matter which one you make you are going to be wrong. But, you can’t just sit back and do nothing, so you just decide. For good or for bad, you make the best choice that comes to you in the time available to think (which sadly isn’t much most of the time).